Sanded down
by Lanny-Sama
Summary: Mermaids and Humans AU Chromedome has lost the most important thing in his life, and without his anchor, he is threatening to go past the point of no return. He meets Rewind on the way there.


Chrome swam on his own through the waves, his sonar picking up nothing but the meaningless clicks of faraway whale pods. He let his belly scrape over the sand as he listlessly moved forward, his fingertips numb from the cold.  
He hadn't seen the rest of his pod for weeks. They had all begun to trek southwards, not too long ago. They had departed very late because they kept insisting to wait for him to come as well, but Chrome hadn't been able to leave Pivot, and Pivot had been far too sick to swim so far.

Pivot had always so disliked the endless trek to the south. He had always been far more into frivolous swimming – performing endless courting dances even when Chrome had taken him as his only true mate years and years back.  
Chrome wiggled his fingers, and the biting cold made his numb fingertips flare with pain. He didn't want to think about Pivot. Pivot was gone.

Chrome's scales were still sickly sticky and sore from where he had tried to wipe the offending black liquid off his mate, and he knew that the taste and smell of it would never leave his senses. Not after seeing how it had turned his well-fed and agile mate into a breathless blind thing, ailing and raving in sickness.

Pivot had stopped moving three days back. He had not inhaled a breath when Chrome had carefully brought his body up to the waves, and he had been so, so cold.  
This morning, Chrome had woken up, and found crabs and starfish already eating at the soft bits of Pivot's eyes and orifices. Violently crushing the animals and hissing had not been able to keep away the realisation that yes, Pivot was dead.

Chrome hadn't been able to stay much longer. He had held his mate close, trying to warm him and make him alive again, but eventually he hadn't been able to stand the silence any longer, and he had fled.

And that was where he was now, lifelessly swimming towards the end of the water. The waves of the sea were stronger in shallower water, and his belly scraped over sand even as his dorsal fin peeked out of the water.

Warnings from when he had been a small fry drifted through his head, and with bitter irony Chrome wondered what his caretakers would think of him now.  
A wave threw him forwards, and Chrome's face impacted on cold wet sand before the wave tumbled over him, filled with sand and seaweed.

The water withdrew, and Chrome's breath hitched when the ice-cold air-waves blew over him. He grasped a handful of sand, and began to drag himself forward, away from the waves, until only the flukes of his tail were touched by water.

He was colder than he could ever remember being, and the sand irritated his eyes and gills. His decorative fins instinctively pressed close to his body for warmth, and his muscles trembled.

'And now we wait.' He thought to himself.

Whether it was the cold, the dry air, or a human, his life would be over soon, and he would rejoin Pivot. In a way, it was fortunate that they had never been able to spawn any fry together. Chrome was not sure if he could have left his ill mate for the sake of their fry.

He kept lying on the beach, and the sea slowly retreated behind him. The ebb was setting in, and the loud rush of waves became soft in the distance. Seagulls were starting to crowd near him, and Chrome flinched away from the beaks that tested how dead he was.

He knew that Pivot would not have wanted this for him. Pivot had always seen so much more good for him than Chrome himself could, and Chrome wished he was able to see the same as his mate had. He simply couldn't imagine what kind of future he could have had without Pivot at his side. There simply was none.

Suddenly, there were sounds approaching. Loud and strange, but undeniably human, and Chrome opened an eye just in time to see a stocky human shooing away the seagulls with a large piece of driftwood.

It seemed that his end would be a painless one after all. Humans killed quickly.

The human crouched down near him, and made more sounds, its expression so very mer-like that it startled Chrome. It was sad.  
Chrome waited for the human to take out their claws, or their long silver stick that shot through the water, but all it did was make soothing noises and then speak softly. It held a small box at the side of its head.

The human didn't make any more moves, and Chrome let his head fall back into the sand. It didn't matter. Very little mattered, and all of it was connected to Pivot.  
The human stuck around, and was joined by other humans some time later. Chrome watched them as they pulled and pushed at strange contraptions, and he kept himself limp as they rolled him onto a thin sheet. They lifted him from the beach, and then moved him into one of the loud, metal creatures that transported them. One of them dabs at his gills with a wet object.

Chrome was afraid, even through his apathy, as the humans began to steer away from the sea, and his body began to hurt as the humans began to warm him with soft cloth.

Right as he's wondering when they will stop playing with their prey, he feels a prick in his side, and a few minutes later the world before him begins to go hazy and dull. He falls into unconsciousness.

The next waking moment, he finds himself in someplace unknown.

The water is warm around him, and something holds him afloat, keeping his blowhole only barely above the water. His fingers itch and burn, and the taste of the water is different from what he's used to.  
When he manages to open his eyes, he sees only a tiny square of sea, bordering on the dirty-steel surroundings of a human structure. The bottom of his tank is flat, without sand or rock, and there are colourful objects scattered all over.

Chrome almost wants to laugh with the irony. So many mers, killed because of humans, and the one time he would welcome their claw, they do their best to keep him alive.  
A human walks up to where he's being held afloat in the water, and it crouches down near the edge, their eyes meeting his. Chrome doesn't return their tentative smile, and closes his eyes. When the humans bring him food, he ignores it and thinks of Pivot.

He will be with him soon.

Rewind's shoulder ached. His camera was heavy to begin with, and he had been filming for well over three hours.

Still, he crouched down by the water, and zoomed in on the face of the mer lying in a plastic hammoc. The blue eyes stared back impassively, barely even blinking. Dead fish were drifting in the water by his head, and his smooth ochre body remained limp.  
His guide, a woman name Nautica, kneeled beside him, and stroked a hand over the mer's head. Her fingers passed harmlessly by his teeth.

"You weren't kidding when you said they looked 'internally dead.'" Rewind said. He ignored the urge to touch the mer's skin.

"Unfortunately not." Nautica replied. "This one washed up on the beach just a few hours ago. Beached himself voluntarily. He's the thirteenth one this year..."

Rewind zoomed out, and let his camera track over the mer's listless body. The toys and puzzles on the bottom of the tank only made the mer's apathy more apparent.  
"That's quite a lot. Why do they do it?"

Nautica had picked up a fish, and was carefully nudging it to the mer's mouth. The only movement the mer made. was to subtly clamp his lips tighter together. "We don't know for sure. The only thing they all had in common was the loss of their mate. They're strictly monogamous. Mated for life."

"Lost your mate huh?" Rewind murmured to the mer. He felt a familiar sting in his own chest, and he smiled at the mer. "I know what that's like."

"Oh." Nautica said. She looked uncomfortable, and she looked as if she was deciding whether to try and shake his hand or not. "My condolences."

"It's okay." Rewind said automatically. "It was a really long time ago. My Dominus was always a little busier with the good of others than he was with his own good. He …. He died doing what he loved doing."  
The charity wind-surfing record had certainly brought in more money than anyone could have foreseen, after Dominus had not come back from the sea. A tragic story always did well in the media.

"That's good to hear." Nautica said neutrally. She had abandoned the fish she'd been trying to feed to the mer, and now just stroked one of his headfins carefully.

"So, what do you do with the mers that beach themselves?" Rewind asked.

"We try to save them." Nautica said. "It's... it's rather thankless work. We attempted to force-feed the first few mer that we found this way, because we thought they were suffering from some ailment, but that didn't work out. They found other ways to die. We stopped giving them names after the first five."

"Sorry if this is kind of blunt," Rewind began, "but... why not let them be? If they're so adamant on dying, why try to save them?"  
"I've wondered that myself, on occasion. The answer was pretty simple when it came to me." Nautica said, and she snorted spitefully. "Do you want to know?"

"I think I can already guess the gist of it." Rewind replied. "Money, right?"

Nautica chuckled. "Close. The truth is that mers are a very well-protected species, and studying them in the wild is almost impossible. Keeping them in aquaria or tanks is prohibited, and killing one is strictly illegal. The only exception is when a mer is wounded and in need of care. Basically, the only reason we bring them here, is so that when they die, we have a fresh corpse for the autopsy."

Rewind couldn't help but send her a shocked stare. "It's... you let them die here for study?"

"It wasn't the original plan." Nautica said. "But our studies can't progress without subjects to observe and dissect. Catching mers is illegal, and corpses are too hard to find and often halfway eaten too. The program for rehabilitation is still running, but... the plans for humane euthanasia are already being worked on. Our lawyers are currently working out the legalities of it."

Rewind looked back at the mer. "He looks so... he looks strong."

"He's in peak condition. Young adult, excellent build, great teeth..." Nautica said. "He's been malnourished for a week or so, before he beached. They're supposed to migrate around this time of year."

Rewind looked into the mer's eyes, and finally dared to reach out. The skin was smooth and slimy, colder than he had expected. "Hey... why didn't go migrate?" He said. "There are more fish in the sea than just the one."  
The irony was not lost on him – he'd given up dating and finding someone new after losing Dominus, and now he was repeating the same stupid lines that everyone around him had been feeding him in his depression.

He knew exactly what it was like to lose someone so important to you. He still woke up feeling like a part of him was already in the grave, just waiting for him to join with it. Still, as his therapist had said; 'Losing a limb is painful, and will impact the rest of your life, but it will not necessarily end it.'

Rewind wished he could convey this to the mer in the plastic hammock, and he brushed a thumb over the mer's white-orange cheekbone. The mer only looked at him dourly.

Nautica splashed the mer slightly, and Rewind drew back to save his shirt from being soaked. The mer's only reaction was a slow blink. "I just want to grab all of them and throttle them until they realise that there's more to life than just their dead ex!"

She splashed another wave of water over the mer, and then stood up with a frustrated sigh. Rewind followed her example.

"Do me a favour, and please alter my voice if you decide to bring that clip out into the news." Nautica said, and she shook the last water droplets from her hand.

"I wasn't filming." Rewind said. "But I'll remember, if I ever bring it to the media."

"That's the most I can ask." Nautica said, and she led him back out of the aquarium-room. "Can I offer you a cup of coffee before you go?"

"Yes, please. I'd like that." Rewind said, and the door slid shut behind him.

 **END**

 **A/N: Mermaids are my jam. If they'r yours too, lemme know.**


End file.
